At the launch of Sahara Rain, on 25 September, my host Dr Jane Frank asked me some thoughtful questions about my work and one of the questions was one that I often get, about poetic form and my use of the prose poem. Jane asked:
In Sahara Rain you have two kinds of poems – lineated verse and prose poems, such as ‘A line of smoke’, ‘Wet again’ and ‘Residue’. Your earlier book, Breathing in Stormy Seasons, was a volume of prose poems. What does the prose poem let you do that the line break cannot, and how do you know which form a poem wants?
My response to Jane was that, for me, choosing the form of a poem is partly about the rhythm and the kind of voice a poem needs, in order to become whole. I would say that a linear poem takes me on a journey, as a writer. Prose poetry allows me to hold a thought.
An Australian writer called Kevin Brophy argues that the prose poem is a often way of capturing a moment, or an ‘intense impression’, encapsulating a momentary tension between our material encounter with the outside world and inner thoughts and emotions. Often my prose poems are somewhat interrogative – addressed in the second person. Linear poems tend to be driven by a different kind of energy and flow. I think it’s a grey area though and some of these poems sit on the fence between poetic lineation and the frame of brief prose.
S.
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